This ‘geyser’ provided quite a spectacle in a Doncaster village. The plume of water rose about 20ft in the air after the unauthorised use of a fire hydrant on Holmes Carr Road, Rossington, on Tuesday.

Paul Thompson, of West End Lane, said: “I think someone was trying to access the water and then it started shooting up. It made quite a feature until the engineers turned up to turn it off. At one stage the bloke parked his van over it so it wouldn’t go so high!”

A spokesman for Yorkshire Water said a ‘third party’ had misused the hydrant and could not turn it off. “This is an example of what can happen if someone illegally uses a fire hydrant, which is for the fire service only.”